PAWTUCKET, RI–For no apparent reason, Pawtucket resident Estelle Scheide, 53, apologized to houseguests Tuesday for the "terribly messy" condition of her spotless house. "I'm so sorry about this," Scheide told a group of visiting relatives. "It's not normally this bad, I swear." "What was she talking about?" son-in-law Bruce Unger asked. "I didn't see a mess anywhere. Did she mean the vacuum cleaner that was out? Or maybe that bag of to-be-recycled newspapers by the back door. Weird."

CHICAGO–A conversation with his boss set Latham, Towson & Green marketing executive Alex Henkel back an hour Monday. "Jesus, I'm gonna be here until midnight," Henkel, 31, said after the time-consuming chat. "I've got tons of work to do today, and the last thing I needed was to have some bullshit pow-wow with [supervisor] Bill [Svoboda]." Svoboda called for the unproductive, 60-minute meeting to "go over some general strategies and just make sure we're on the same page about things."

CAMBRIDGE, MA–A team of MIT physicists announced Monday that they have successfully split the smithereen, heretofore considered the smallest possible unit of matter. "For decades, conventional scientific wisdom held that the most to which you could blow something was smithereens," Dr. Jonathan Eng said. "It now appears that it is possible, under certain special laboratory conditions, to blow something to sub-smithereens." Eng said he believes the discovery will revolutionize humanity's potential for harnessing smithereenetic energy.

ATLANTA–Seeking to break the tension and inform others that he was in the bathroom, Barnes & Noble men's-room- stall occupant Larry Ardell coughed Monday. "I was alone in the bathroom, taking a dump, when I could hear one or two other guys walk in," Ardell recalled. "I wasn't sure they knew I was there, and I started getting a little uptight about it, so I decided to cough." Ardell said he had considered rattling the toilet-paper dispenser as a means of announcing his presence, but decided against it out of concern that it would call attention to his wiping.

LISBON, PORTUGAL–President Clinton deplaned from Air Force One excited and thrilled Monday following a fun plane ride from Washington to Lisbon for an eight-day, three-nation European trip. "I went on the airplane," Clinton shouted to Portuguese president Jorge Sampaio. "We went way, way up high, and I saw lots of clouds." Clinton, who has refused to remove the golden-wings pin given to him by Air Force One pilot Edwin Jacobs, capped his remarks with several seconds of airplane noises.

Hey, Jeanketeers, remember in my last column, how I said I was going to tell hubby Rick about my decision to retire from the workaday world and become a full-time housewife? Well, if you were anywhere in the vicinity of 1567 Blossom Meadows Drive on the evening of May 3, I sure hope you had a good pair of earplugs!

My considerable ire was raised yet again this past week when I was subjected to the ignominy of an intrusion on my privacy, conducted by means of the insulting mechanical-tele-phone device, by a reporter calling from the infamous Gentle-Man's Quarterly Gazette.

We're all adults here. Can we please conduct this U.N. tribunal without stooping to using that loaded, pejorative term? Yes, as leader of the Kunhing military junta in Myanmar, I did call for the death of four million people, all of whom just happened to be of Shan ethnicity. And, yes, a few of these Shan–let's say 921,452–died at the hands of my mercenary army. But are we really prepared to call it a genocide? Come on, now. That's not the sort of word you just throw around.

MENOMONEE FALLS, WI–Chris Knopecke, a senior at Menomonee Falls High School, declared the University of Wisconsin at Whitewater "awesome" Monday, describing his weekend visit to the school as "so unbelievably cool."

Five Or Six Dudes Jump Out Of Nowhere And Just Start Whaling On This One Guy

BOULDER, CO–Shock and disbelief were the prevailing reactions Monday, when pizza-delivery guy Lyle Kelso, 24, reported to roommates that at around 2 or 3 a.m., he personally witnessed, like, five or six dudes suddenly jump out of freakin' nowhere and just start totally whaling on this one guy.

Lyle Kelso points out the site of Monday's seriously freaky dude-whaling.

"That is majorly messed-up," roommate "Thatches" Moynihan said. "You hear about that sort of shit on the news, but you never think it's going to happen right in front of somebody you know who'll later come home and totally tell you all about it. When Lyle told us, I was like, 'Whoa, dude. That's harsh.' We all were. It sounded like some seriously wigged-out shit, from what Lyle was saying."

According to Moynihan, he and three other roommates were sitting around, just kicking back and watching TV, when Kelso burst into the room and breathlessly announced that "you guys are not gonna fucking believe what the fuck I just saw by the Dumpsters behind Papa Luigi's [Pizza]."

After a dramatic pause, the visibly agitated Kelso said, "I just saw some poor fucker completely get his ass beat down by a bunch of seriously pissed-off dudes," prompting responses ranging from "No way, man!" to "Holy shit, dude!"

According to this one guy who heard the story from a buddy of one of the roommates at a house party the next night, the scene supposedly went down something like this: Toward the end of his shift, Kelso sneaked out to the alleyway between Papa Luigi's and Fat Pete's Subs to fire up a big ol' jay. While smoking up, Kelso heard the sound of squealing tires from the parking lot behind Papa Luigi's. Fearing that it was the cops about to bust his ass, he peered around the corner to check out what the fuck was up. Kelso said he saw a black van, identified only by an airbrushed painting of a barbarian chick on the side and an enormous "Ozzy" sticker in the back window, suddenly pull up from out of nowhere, right next to some dude who was about to get in his car.

Without warning, the guy who heard the story from a buddy of one of the roommates said, five or six huge-ass motherfuckers who totally looked like bodybuilders or something jumped out of the van, cornered the unidentified victim, and basically just commenced to whaling on his ass.

Kelso describes the whaling.

"I would've tried to help, but there was no way I was messing with those fuckers. Uh-uh, no sir," Kelso reportedly told roommates. "I may have been baked, but I ain't stupid."

After several minutes of some seriously painful ass-kicking, the big, mean-looking dudes reportedly hopped back inside the van and bolted as suddenly as they'd appeared. Before Kelso could approach the poor fucker who'd gotten whaled on, the dude limped to his car and bolted, leaving the stunned Kelso standing there wondering what the holy hell had just fucking happened and "feeling like [his] mind was totally friggin' blown."

Though the identity of the whaled-upon dude remains unknown, numerous theories exist regarding who the fuck he was. Among the theories are that he was Some Poor Sap Who Never Knew What Hit Him, A Guy Who Just Happened To Be In The Wrong Place At The Way-Wrong Freaking Time, or Somebody Who Obviously Must Have Fucked With The Wrong People. Supporters of each theory, however, agree that, whoever the hell the guy was, he probably ain't exactly having the best day right about now, wherever the hell he is.

The attack has raised serious safety and crime-prevention concerns among the roommates.

"After that shit Lyle told us he saw, I ain't goin' anywhere without a baseball bat in the car, I'm telling you that right the fuck now," said Matt Mendham, 22. "It's like, do I want to get my ass pounded by a bunch of monster dudes? No, I don't think so."

Despite the strong reaction to the guy-whaling incident among Kelso roommates and associates, some are questioning the validity of his claims.

"Kelso's always making shit up," said Dan Soderlund, a longtime coworker of Kelso's at Papa Luigi's. "He smokes a few bowls, and the next thing you know, it's, 'Dude! The freakiest thing just happened!' It's like, 'Yeah, yeah, keep talking, Lyle.' That guy is so full of it sometimes. Believe me, I've heard it all before, man."